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Thursday, January 20, 2022
4:00 pm
Presenter: Dr. Margarita Sánchez-Domínguez, Senior Researcher at CIMAV, Monterrey Campus
Nature has always been a source of inspiration to propose innovative technologies to improve our quality of life. The current challenges for the development of novel nanotechnological processes, lead us to explore new methods for the synthesis of nanomaterials. Hierarchical superstructures (HSS) are of great interest because the self-assembly of low-dimensional nanostructures (up to the macroscale) allows the control and optimization of the performance by coupling the properties of the individual blocks. Surfactant self-assembled structures such as micelles and liquid crystals are convenient for the controlled synthesis of HSS because they provide a confined reaction media which confers a great control over the size of the building blocks. Furthermore, bicontinuous microemulsions may extend the possibilities, because their interconnected, infinite nanochannels provide an interesting type of soft three-dimensional template. Considering these advantages, this work will present a review of different hierarchical superstructures (polymeric, ceramic and metallic) synthesized using bicontinuous microemulsions as templates. On the other hand, electrodeposition routes offer fast, robust, clean and reproducible ways towards the synthesis of metallic and multi-metallic HSS. The different structures will be compared with different patterns found in nature, whose optimized HSS shows how the synthetic routes can be exploited to obtain increasingly efficient nanomaterials.
About Dr. Margarita Sánchez-Domínguez:
Dr. Margarita Sánchez Domínguez is a Senior Researcher at CIMAV, Monterrey Campus, since 2010. She is a regular member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences since 2020, and she belongs to the National Researcher System of CONACYT (level 2). She has a Bachelors in Industrial Chemistry from the Faculty of Chemical Sciences (1997), at the Autonomous University of Nuevo Leon. She holds a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry with a specialty in surfactant systems from the University of Bristol (2004). She completed two post-doctoral stays, the first from 2004 to 2006 at the Institut Charles Sadron in Strasbourg, France, and the second from 2006 to 2010 at the Institute of Advanced Chemistry of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. She has published 76 JCR articles, 1 book (Nanocolloids, Elsevier), 7 book chapters. She has graduated 29 postgraduate and 14 undergraduate students, and currently supervises 4 graduate and 2 undergraduate theses. She is Associate Editor of Frontiers in Materials. She has 8 registered patents and has participated in 20 industry projects, 10 of them as project leader. She has directed basic science, frontier science and infrastructure projects. She has approximately 1450 type A citations, for an H index of 26. Her research topics include the synthesis of hierarchical plasmonic superstructures using bicontinuous microemulsions as reaction media, as well as by electrodeposition, electrophoresis and galvanic displacement for their application as SERS substrates, electrochemical sensors for health and environmental applications, and electrocatalysts. In addition to the development of micro and nanoformulations for their application as controlled and prolonged release systems of actives in the pharmaceutical, home care and food industries, among others.